Who she is: Maria Hill
Her power: No superpowers. Does being super awesome count?
Her story: When we first meet Maria Hill in the pre-title sequence of The Avengers, she’s serving as Deputy Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., directly under Nick Fury. She works with him to bring together the Avengers after the Tesseract is stolen by Loki, though she’s more skeptical of their potential than he. (Deleted scenes and an alternate opening offer a bit more of her pessimistic perspective.) She’s essentially by Fury’s side throughout the events of the film, and we next see her in Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., helping Phil Coulson assemble his team. She keeps Coulson in the dark about the project used to bring him back to life, as well as witholding Melinda May’s additional mission of keeping an eye on Coulson.
From there, Hill next turns up in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, where she helps Nick Fury keep his survival of the assassination attempt a secret, and letting others think he was dead. She snuck a captured Captain America, Black Widow, and Falcon to freedom, where they met up with the very much alive Fury, and proceeded to take down Alexander Pierce and destroy Hydra’s plan to unleash the helicarriers upon any potential threats to the group’s existence. With the public collapse of S.H.I.E.L.D., Hill takes a job at Stark Industries, though she continued to work covertly for Fury. She’s seen again in Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., aiding Coulson’s team and helping to rescue Skye (soon to be Daisy Johnson) from the just-revealed treachery of double agent Grant Ward. She offers Coulson a job with Stark, but he refuses. Hill’s most recent appearance was in Avengers: Age Of Ultron, where she worked with the Avengers to defeat the malevolent A.I. and save the people of Sokovia during the climactic battle.
Played by: Cobie Smulders
Currently, Maria Hill is: Working at the new Avengers facility in upstate New York.
Where will we see her next? Uncertain, but a good chance she’ll appear in one of the Phase Three films, and almost certainly in Avengers: Infinity War, due in 2018.